To this aspiring temper they ascribed, not only "those pestilent whispers which, clandestinely circulating through the country, had, as far as was practicable, contaminated some of its fairest and worthiest characters," but also certain publications affecting the reputation of prominent individuals whom he might consider as competitors with himself for the highest office in the state.

A letter written by Mr.Jefferson to a printer, transmitting for publication the first part of "the rights of man," which letter was prefixed to the American edition of that pamphlet, contained allusions to certain "political heresies" of the day, which were understood to imply a serious censure on the opinions of the vice president: and the great object of the national gazette, a paper known to be edited by a clerk in the department of state, was "to calumniate and blacken public characters, and, particularly, to destroy the public confidence in the secretary of the treasury, who was to be hunted down for the unpardonable sin of having been the steady and invariable friend of broad principles of national government." It was also said that his connexions with this paper, and the patronage he afforded it, authorized the opinion that it might fairly be considered "the mirror of his views," and thence was adduced an accusation not less serious in its nature than that which has been already stated.
The national gazette was replete with continual and malignant strictures on the leading measures of the administration, especially those which were connected with the finances.

"If Mr.Jefferson's opposition to these measures had ceased when they had received the sanction of law, nothing more could have been said than that he had transgressed the rules of official decorum in entering the lists with the head of another department, and had been culpable in pursuing a line of conduct which was calculated to sow the seeds of discord in the executive branch of the government in the infancy of its existence.

But when his opposition extended beyond that point, when it was apparent that he wished to _render odious_, and of course to _subvert_ (for in a popular government these are convertible terms) all those deliberate and solemn acts of the legislature which had become the pillars of the public credit, his conduct deserved to be regarded with a still severer eye." It was also said to be peculiarly unfit for a person remaining at the head of one of the great executive departments, openly to employ all his influence in exciting the public rage against the laws and the legislature of the union, and in giving circulation to calumnies against his colleagues in office, from the contamination of which the chief magistrate himself could not hope entirely to escape.
END OF VOLUME IV..